Jan 012020
 
Fireworks igniting in the sky

Happy New Year to all my blog readers, regular and/or one-time! Wishing you and your family all the best, success, and prosperity in 2020!

Finishing up in 2019, I’m averaging over 115,000 unique views per month on this technology blog thanks to you all. I’m hoping to create some new exciting, educational, and helpful content for 2020.

If you’d like to see anything, have a technology product you’d like reviewed, or have any questions, drop a comment or open up a chat! I love getting in touch with readers!

Cheers!

Sep 232019
 

Looking for me to review your technology product? Feel free to reach out to discuss! I love new tech, blogging about it, and helping others with it!

On a case by case basis, I may like to review or write up a post on your product. I regularly review or write about servers, storage (SAN, DAS, NAS), virtualization (VDI, Server Consolidation), virtualized GPUs, mobile devices, laptops, and more!

Audience

This blog receives over 100,000 unique visitors per month, and most articles and posts tend to get ranked extremely high with search engines in multiple countries (especially the United States and Canada).

Our typical audience is IT professionals (both technical and decision makers), along with product manufacturers, vendors, and IT support companies.

I also regularly engage with and assist readers numerous times per day, regarding the content on the blog and products I post about.

An Example

As an example, my review on the HPE MSA 2040 Storage array, posted on May 28th, 2015 resulted in 30,000-60,000 unique views per month obtained organically through Google. For over 3 years, my blog post ranked higher in Canada on Google, than the actual HPE product page.

Continuing on today, I still receive over 10,000 unique views per month on the post, as well as other related MSA posts I’ve completed since then.

Short-Term or Long-Term Reviews

Whether you’re looking for a short term review or long term review, I may be able to accommodate both. With the products I use on a regular basis, I continue to write and add content to my page regarding them if I incorporate them in to my daily use.

How to get in touch

Feel free to use the contact information on this blog, open a chat, or reach out to me via various social networks (Facebook, IG, LinkedIn). I’m always happy to chat!

Jul 192019
 
King Creek Ridge Summit

Sunday (July 14th, 2019) we had the opportunity to hike King Creek Ridge. I’d considering this hike a moderate hike, very steep, and can be completed in a short amount of time. Taking the traditional route to the summit, it took us around just under an hour. This hike is located in Kananaskis Country, and there is no cell reception anywhere on the trail.

There are other trails (and alternate trails) along this path. I do not recommend taking these or attempting these. Please read below to find out why.

AllTrails Link: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/alberta/king-creek-trail

King Creek Ridge Summit View
King Creek Ridge Summit View

King Creek Ridge is a steep ascent to an altitude of around 2,400m (7,874ft), so it’ll require some cardio. I completed this hike with my friend Elisha, and her step-dad Tim!

Stephen Wagner and Elisha posing on King Creek Ridge
Stephen Wagner and Elisha on King Creek Ridge
King Creek Ridge Valley View
King Creek Ridge Valley

On this hike, we met a nice group of other hikers who mentioned that they read in a book (that was 15 years old), about a loop on this trail. Once at the summit, they planned to go down the Mount Hood route to complete the loop. Using the map I had downloaded to my mobile, I actually had a copy of the Mount Hood route, so we figured we’d attempt it as well.

Mount Hood Route Detour

IMPORTANT: DO NOT ATTEMPT THE MOUNT HOOD ROUTE! IT IS AN OLD ROUTE AND THERE IS NO VISIBLE TRAIL. IT’S FULL OF DENSE BUSH, LIMITED VISIBILITY, AND HAS WILDLIFE (BEARS).

Once we had our time at the summit and relaxed (we flew up there pretty quick), we decided to try and locate the path down to the valley to complete the Mount Hood route. We located a small channel that was very steep and full of loose rocks (extremely dangerous). After navigating down, we noticed that an avalanche or weather related incident had damaged the path and it was simply a cliff. We proceeded to find a different way to go down in to the valley after doing a big of climbing down.

King Creek Ridge to Mount Hood Route
King Creek Ridge to Mount Hood Route

After the dangerous part, we found a steep path down (shown above) that we used to get in to the valley. Unfortunately this was short lived. Once getting in to the valley, we approached bush that was ~5 ft high, and numerous places to be ambushed by bears. We had to use boulders to throw in to the bushes ahead to make sure there were no bears further up (also using regular bursts of the air horn).

Finally once we made it to the creek, we realized using the GPS that the Mount Hood Route was extremely old and grown over. There was no visible trail for Mount Hood Route. We continued along the creek (walking in/over it) for some time until it became so difficult and dangerous that we decided we had to turn around and go back.

Back to King Creek Ridge from Mount Hood Route
Back to King Creek Ridge from Mount Hood Route

The hike/climb back up to the summit of the King Creek Ridge hike was grueling. It was one of the steepest hikes I’ve done, and finished with sections that we actually had to climb (using our hands) to get back to the King Creek Ridge summit.

Back on to King Creek Ridge

So the detour, while extremely dangerous and unnerving, actually made the hike as long as we had originally wanted it, and as fun as we had hoped, so it turned out pretty good (after we realized we weren’t going to be stuck in the valley all night, lol).

We finally descended down the way we had originally came up, and all in all the day turned out to be amazing! The hiking trail actually was extremely busy later on in the afternoon by the time we went down.

King Creek Ridge Hike Pictures

Below are pictures from the hike, please click to enter the attachment page, and then click again to enlarge. The below are low quality thumbnails, when you click on the image it will open the high-resolution image.

Stay safe, be bear aware, and always verify trails exist before you head out on to them!

Jul 122019
 

Last week (July 3rd, 2019), I hiked and climbed Mount Lawrence Grassi with my friend Elisha. It was a very aggressive hike, ascending very quickly to an altitude of 2,685 meters (8,809 feet).

It took us around 7 hours and 45 minutes, with a total moving time of 4 hours and 43 minutes. We completed a total elevation gain of 1,177m. My cardio has been horrible this year as I’ve been focusing on strength training so I slowed us down a little bit.

Picture gallery is below of the hike.

I’d only recommend this hike only for advanced hikers as the last 100 feet can be extremely dangerous (risk of slipping, sliding off cliff on both sides). Cell phone reception (for emergencies) is available for most of the hike.

Stephen Wagner Posing on Mount Lawrence Grassi while Hiking
Stephen Wagner on Mount Lawrence Grassi

We’ve had issues with weather this year, but fortunately for us we chose the perfect day. It was a bit chilly at the top, but it turned out perfectly! The views from the summit were amazing!

View from Summit at Mount Lawrence Grassi

Other than the sketchy 100ft at the top, the only other issue we had was a bear encounter on the way back to the vehicle. Once we got back to the bottom of the mountain, starting our 2km walk to the vehicle, we crossed paths with a black bear. We immediately prepped our bear counter-measures (we always carry bear mace, bear bangers, air horn, etc), however two chirps of the air horn caused it to retreat in to the forest.

AllTrails Link: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/alberta/mount-lawrence-grassi

Mount Lawrence Grassi Hike Pictures

Below are pictures from the hike, please click to enlarge. The below are low quality thumbnails, when you click on the image it will open the high-resolution image.

The best photos are at the end of the album when we reached the summit!

Stay safe and be bear aware!

Feb 222013
 

I have long awaited the release of the Microsoft Surface Pro since their first initial announcement about entering the tablet market. The first device released: “Surface RT” was a lightweight, thin, powerful tablet that could run Metro apps, along with Microsoft Office and had a battery life of continuous use around 10 hours. The second device released: “Surface Pro” was a new device that didn’t fall under either distinction of a Tablet or Laptop but could be used as either, that was a powerful portable computer that could run all your applications, along with the Metro apps, be easily transported, used anywhere, and had a decent battery life (~4 hours of heavy use, I’ve gotten over 8 hours of battery use).

Being an I.T. professional, I figured I would wait for the Surface Pro to be released since I believed I’d mostly be using normal Windows applications over the “Metro” style apps. I’ve been running Windows 8 on my desktop since Microsoft made it available to partners mid way through 2012. During that time, once I tried to configure and use the Metro apps, but using them with  non-touch interface was weird enough for me not to end up using any. I usually stay on the desktop, and when needed to launch a program I simply hit the start button, type the first few letters of the program, hit enter, and it launches.

First off I want to start off addressing Windows 8 being used as a tablet interface. It’s slick! Since receiving my Surface Pro, even after installing Microsoft Outlook and other desktop applications I regularly use, I found that over time, I never even go in to the desktop. Using the Metro interface with touch capabilities is simply brilliant. It’s very easy to use, navigate, configure, and surprisingly enough I find that 98% of everything I do can be accomplished via Metro style applications. I don’t even go in to Microsoft Outlook anymore since I have my Exchange account configured with the Mail Metro app. Occasionally I might use Outlook,  but it’s only to do advanced tasks such as deal with Meeting requests that I need to add info, or dealing with numerous attachments, etc… The Windows 8 touch interface is beautiful and resembles Windows Phone to the tee.

Briefly visiting the desktop aspect, the desktop is your familiar Windows desktop, with the modification of no start menu since it’s running Windows 8. On the Surface Pro you can install any Windows Application, and they run great. This device has the power to run most graphic intensive games, drawing applications, and anything else you can throw at it. It works great and I have no complaints. One thing to note is that Microsoft implemented scaling since the display is a true 1080p display, and with such a small screen the writing wouldn’t be visible for those with bad eyes. I so far have not had any issues with the scaling, and applications look great.

Now going back to the Metro style interface, there are numerous apps available. Use of the Mail, People, Calendar, Internet Explorer, etc.. all work great. I use these all the time and haven’t had any issues. They are perfect for working with you exchange account, browsing the internet, talking with Facebook friends, tweeting on twitter, browsing internet forums, etc… Again, everything works great, no problems whatsoever, and you can accomplish plenty using these.

A few apps to mention, Xbox Music is fantastic. I’ve been using my Zune pass since I purchased my first Windows Phone 7 (Nokia Lumia 900), and have been creating playlists, downloading music on the fly, and absolutely love it. I also use it all the time on my desktop computer as well. When first playing with my new Surface, it was very easy to configure my xbox music pass, and it actually sync’ed all my music from my other devices to my new Surface once I enabled the feature. It’s fantastic, and now I often find myself listening to music whenever working wherever I am in my house, or on weekends when I’m doing work/implementations at clients offices. It’s super slick!

Another app that has come in handy for me, being an IT professional, is the Remote Desktop app. Whenever rolling out updates to clients, or working on my own servers, it’s awesome being able to establish numerous RDP sessions, and switch between them on the fly. It’s just that simple… It’s actually faster to use the Metro style Remote Desktop app, then it is to use the native Windows application.

The amount of apps I use is actually endless, so it’s pointless going in to detail for each and every one of them. The native Windows 8 metro apps are just awesome. One other app I actually do have to mention that is a particular favorite of mine is “Package Tracker”. I regularly sell, ship, and send items to/from clients, and it’s great being able to track all the packages in a simple to use interface. What’s even slicker, is having Package Tracker linked to my SkyDrive account, so packages I’m tracking will be sync’ed between my Surface Pro, and my Lumia 900 Windows Phone.

Now on to actual physical characteristic of the Surface Pro. The device is thin (thinner then I’d expect for a fully working high performance computer), and it’s built using great materials. It feels great in the hand, and the use of the kickstand is great! They have two separate types of keyboards/covers for both Surface models. I’m using the Touch keyboard and love it, it takes advantage of pressure applied to the keys of a pad with printed letters on it, also has a fully working track-pad. The other option available is the Type keyboard, which actually has mechanical keys on it, for those of you who prefer that. I haven’t seen or played with a Type cover, but the Touch cover is great for typing, using as a screen protector when mobile, and when flipping it backward the keys are disabled so you can’t accidently trigger any of the buttons (and in the 2 weeks I’ve had mine, it’s been working flawlessly).

The Surface pro also comes with a pen that you can use for marking up documents, taking notes (really cool to use in Microsoft OneNote), and also as a mouse when you want something more accurate then lets say your finger. Now Microsoft really shined with implementing this, you can actually rest your hand on the screen while writing with the pen, and since the Surface Pro recognizes the pen is near/present, it will disable any touch input from your hand. I tried as hard as I could to mess it up, but again flawless every time. The pen also has a magnet mounted on the side so it actually attaches to the tablet when mobile. At first I thought it would fall off easily when moving around, getting in/out of the car, etc… But it’s been rock solid and I haven’t had any accidents where it’s come off except when I actually want to remove it and use it.

As for some other random hardware notes, the surface comes equipped with a USB 3.0 port, and a Mini Display-port. I’ve used the display port to play movies from the Surface to my 1080p television and it was slick. Quality was amazing.

One major contribution that the Surface has given me, is the capabilities to work during meetings, have information readily available, and take notes. The device is so small, that when you meet with someone, and use it to take notes or reference material, that it’s not obtrusive if setup between you and the person you’re meeting with. Normally I have “Internet Sharing” setup on my Windows Phone, connect to my corporate VPN and I can access documents on the fly, generate invoices from QuickBooks, prepare quotes on the fly, and pretty much have access to any information, when I need it. I can’t tell you how amazing it is, to have all this information at your fingertips in such a nice little package.

Now to one of the biggest conclusions I’ve come to since using the Surface Pro, after realizing I use mostly Metro style apps, I could have actually gotten away with using a Surface RT instead. 90% of the day to day work I do could be done on the Surface RT. I actually plan on purchasing a Surface RT soon, and use the RT for day-to-day meetings, web surfing, music, web browsing, etc… And then use my Surface Pro for when I require a full computer, implementations, work at clients offices, when I require the use of Windows Desktop applications.

 

Overall I’m very impressed with this device, it’s slick, beautiful, and has increased my productivity. Perfect for everyday business or everyday personal use. I’ve demo’d the device to numerous clients (over 10) and they all love it and plan on purchasing one when stock is available.

 

Now as for my only complaint: The Surface Pro does not have LTE capabilities. This is somewhat of an annoyance since I regularly connect to my corporate VPN for network resource. Although it’s an annoyance, you can easily work around it by either using a LTE USB data card, or using “Internet Sharing” on your Windows Phone.